When Memory Ends
by arctique48
Summary: She lost herself in that war. Her world reduced to black and white and she remembers them. One shot


**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc. belongs to JKR.

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_"Open Minded,  
__I'm sure I used to be so free."_

Muse - Citizen Erased.

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By the window a girl sits. Her hair hangs about her face in a mass of bushy curls. Before her there is a book and to her left a quill and ink. By the window a girl sit at a desk.

She likes it there. She's liked it there for a long time. Since she last remembers. (Sometimes she remembers a lot.) (Sometimes she can do no more than remember.) The room is unimportant to her, a bed, an en-suite, a table perhaps… and a few chairs… But her window. Her window and her desk with the bookshelf alongside it. She likes her window a lot.

Today she reads about the Fae. It interests her. She would like to try the potion at some time, she might ask Harry to get her the ingredients next time she sees him…

Today is a good day. She slept well, so well she missed the dawn. (She hasn't remembered yet today.) Her book is interesting and the breakfast – no doubt left by Natty, her clothed house elf – was lovely. The sun dapples as the passes the leaves of the tree, a large oak, to shed light on the old yellowed pages of the tome.

_The silence was thick and drowsy, contrasted with the fresh breeze that whispered through the window. By the window she sat. This window was different, but the girl was the same. Same hair, same nose, same expression on her face. She read by the window and felt the silent breeze cool her face. She loved the library. _

The girl blinks hard. She hasn't finished her tea yet. She always gets distracted when she doesn't finish her morning tea.

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…"_No_." 

And that was how it started.

Years ago, with the sun beyond the horizon and all hopes of it ever rising again rapidly shrinking from her head. She watched him and heard him whimper, the slow seeping of redness across the snow, like twilight punctured by the dawn… The muggle way. With a knife and anger and black hatred shining in her eyes. She killed a man that night.

And it became like that every night. Every night forever. Like the sun wouldn't rise and there would never be normality again.

But the life she lived now - the one she thought she'd fought so hard to obtain, with no prejudice and bitter schoolboys dying in the snow - that life was normal in every sense. It was her and it was what she thought she had longed for it to be (alone in the cold when the sky turned black).

She lived so many years in a personal hell, when she went against every belief she had to defend the very principles she broke… (_She's asked his forgiveness, weeping and holding his had as his eyes went out_.) He was only the first but it was justified. (_With his last dieing breath he had spat…_) Because she was saving the world…. Her world. She was saving her family and her friends. _(…"No".)_ She was saving herself.

She had fought and she had won and she was so painfully grateful for the chance to forget it all. To revert. To be the her she had always wanted to be (The her that had never killed and bled and wept for her sanity to the cold of that one windowed room.). To let it bleed away and continue from her eleven-year-old self who had never heard the name 'mudblood', who had never killed and died for that name. She longed for that. But the emptiness of the open sky and the cold of the bleeding scythe of a moon left her alone (in a dark room alone. Cold and alone.).

The war changed many things. All things. Everything it touched. (Like a contagious disease, breeding and spreading and breeding and bleeding you dry.) She tried to change (or to not have changed) and return to life of unassuming innocence and self respect, but the War had touched her too. Violated her. (Bled her dry.) And she would watch the blackness of the sky and hope and pray and long for dawn. Sitting by the window, watching the east (praying), so certain the sun wouldn't rise.

And sometimes she would see it and cry (bled dry but never truly spent). She would look into the dawning light and feel… unsettled. Because it's glow spread and shed its light and was beautiful… but deceptive, so deceptive and laced in blood. And it was beautiful and frightened her ("There's nothing more beautiful that death…"). Blood spreading through black and life springing from the void ("…than pain.").

She knew it didn't matter, what he had said ("Mudblood) what they had said ("dirty… vermin… inhuman filth."). She knew blood was not the issue… and yet as the sun tainted even the blackness of night the colour of lost life she wondered…

'She had seen too much'. She's heard them say that. They thought she couldn't hear just because she wasn't watching (they forget many things. They forget she was trained to hunt and kill and pick up on the little things.) They think she had lost her mind, just because she doesn't remember where she is now or how she got there. She never lost her mind, just herself. She lost herself to that war.

_Another death. Not like the first. This one fills her heart with sorrow (not guilt: sorrow). He struggles for air and she stokes his hair, "It's going to be alright…Shhh, shhh, they're gone… Help's coming… Shhh… You did it, Neville, you're going to be fine…" He shakes his head and his eyes plead. "No. You don't, you're going to make it. They haven't left us. They're coming back right now. Harry and Ron will come and they'll have healers with them. You're going to make it Neville… You're not going to let go." He gasps and swallows and sobs and presses her wand to her hand… His eyes whisper 'Please'…_

_She killed a man that night. Watched his breathing stop and face relax. She watched the pain drift from his features as she lowered her wand and cried until they found her. She was so sorry._

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("I know you'll make us proud.")

("_Mudblood_!")

("We'll show them")

(…"_No_.")

("Don't give up on me. On this. Don't ever forger.")

('_Please_.')

Some things said will stay with you forever. _Just words_. She knows it's true but she can't help it. Just words but with such meaning they burrow into her subconscious and leave her sitting by the window waiting for the dawn (because they said there was always hope) (don't give up and it might just work) (never forget).

Light enters her monochrome existence and black fades to white. And life continues. Normality and routine.

And she doesn't forget. Not ever. Can't and won't. (Not that she doesn't try.) (With every aching breath she tries.) She sees them occasionally, they visit and they talk about normal things like the weather and the papers and mutual friends. (Not War. Never war. Stable. Routine. Normality.) (Never War.) And then they will leave and life will go on and the Earth will turn and sun will rise and she will continue with her existence.

Sometimes she has dreams. Sometimes she likes them. Sometimes she cries. But she always remembers. (The dreams.) (The memories.) Sometimes she wakes to the world in black (blue or green or grey eyes glowing in her mind's eye). Sometimes she wakes in the black and sees lights, and sometimes she wakes in the light and sees colour and sometimes she thinks she might forget. But not yet. (Because she sounded so hopeful and caring.) (Because he never gave up).

(Because life goes on and the world will turn and she feels satisfaction in the defeat of evil.) And it keeps her waiting for dawn. Dawn and light and hope. (And realisation of colour.) (Realisation of mortality.)

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She loves her window. It reminds her of school (a desk by glass, fire behind her, secluded but not alone). It lends her imagination and inspiration (the ducks and the children and the buzzing of life in a united world). (United and masochistic.) She loves to read by her window, and watch the sun chase the clouds across the sky (birds and planes and leaves in autumn). She loves her window.

Sometimes she would pretend she wasn't scared. That the world's ending wasn't haunting her very soul with every waking second. Sometimes she would tell them she was going to be alright and they would understand (because no one survived the War. People died and legends were made and prejudices lived on (silent but breathing)) (No person survived that war.) All so different to how it had been, from how it should be. Life didn't work as it used to (but it goes on. Forever and ever and ever and ever…) (Life goes on.) She never made the headlines for her blinding discovery of something (anything) (please God anything) unrelated to war. She was pictured, forever recoded in black and white (monochrome reflection of existence. Her life.) as a victor, Harry Potter's best friend, alive and the very essence of peace. (But she was a child of war. Trained to kill and question and trust no one. She symbolised nothing but the root of the conflict. She was different in a normality that scared them half to death (half. Never wholly.) close enough to lend them hate and anger and _fear_. (Because it was all their weapons. His and hers and it backfired when used (unknowingly) (subconsciously) (imaginarily). It backfired on her and it backfired on Him. People are animals (not just her, but them too. All humanity-) and an animal in fear is terrifying thing. Fear breeds fear and hatred takes root to balance out the anger and threat.) She was pictured as the hope and the survivor when she no longer knew herself (that little had survived.) (A shell. She felt hollow.) And they praised her as they praised him; she had been a part of it, even in her absence of self. (Empty.)

The little girl who thwarted flames with pure logic was gone now. And she had never really worked out what replaced her. Sometimes she hated the person, the one that stared back from her window at night when her world turned black. Sometimes she hated her so hard she cried and threw things (but the glass wouldn't break and nothing hurt enough). Sometimes she cried because she didn't understand, and although all she ever did was remember she could not recollect how it happened. To have saved the world and lost herself along the way seemed too melodramatic and putridly poetic for words. On days like that she would allow the melancholy to take over and she would cry herself to sleep at the injustice of it all (because she didn't understand any more. And nothing hurt more than not understanding.) And then she would wake with the world all white, shadows gone and with them with her reflection in the window. And she would look out and watch life go on, and read and write and learn some more. And maybe have a guest or two.

(Her protectors. But not saviours as many were accustomed to believe.)

(Not saviours because she had not been saved. They protected her from pain and from death but they did not save her.)

She lost herself in that War, and now all she can do is sit by the window, all sterile white robes and broken smile, and whisper to the world which refused to wait… "_Please..."_

Hermione Granger lost herself in that War. She saved the world and made the sacrifice so many took before her. She remembers and remembers and will not let herself forget but at a point the memory ends. ("She was lucky," they had said.) And there is only her and her world of white and black with a single window in hospital room. ("Torture so deep…. She remembers none of it. She suffered… but she doesn't know it. She's not ever going to know it, Mr Potter. I'm sorry there was nothing more we could do.")

Hermione wakes up to a world of black and watches the sun bleed its light into the sky (out the window the colours dance). She watches them come and go, with drinks and occasionally smiles ("This is for that ache in your neck Miss Granger."). She turns the pages of a book and sees light reflect off white surfaces.

("Mr Weasley's gone, Hermione. You know he's gone.")

("I can see him! He needs help! He's bleeding!")

("No, Hermione. Not anymore. Now drink this, Ron's not there.")

By the window a girl sits. Her hair hangs about her face in a mass of bushy curls. Before her there is a book and to her left a quill and ink. She drinks her tea and smiles at her elf. Sometimes her headaches make her see things, the tea will wake her up though.

By the window a girl sit at a desk.

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**Review?**


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